Mosaic from Krillbite Studio and Raw Fury is a surrealistic and bizarre point and click adventure on Nintendo Switch. Learn more in our Mosaic review!
Mosaic from Krillbite, who brought us the psychological horror game Among the Sleep, a game I got a chance to review on PlayStation 4 and which is now out on Nintendo Switch as Among the Sleep – Enhanced Edition, are now back to give us a different type of experience. While Among the Sleep placed you in the shoes of a young kid who seems the world from a very particular point of view due to his age and his size, Mosaic goes into the other side of the spectrum, giving us an adventure into the loneliness of adulthood.
Mosaic presents a story in which you play as a salaryman, a cog in the machine, completing monotonous and repetitive tasks over and over. It gives us a game with a very interesting stylized look that will certainly grab your attention as you start to play. Your journey will begin with the most obnoxious monster that has ever existed: your phone alarm going off. Once you’re awake, you’ll need to flick a switch and go to the bathroom to straighten your tie, tidy up your hair, and brush your teeth so that you can go to work.
But before you leave the house, you might want to check the overdue invoices on your table – they’re right next to the newspaper. Scan it, and you’ll be able to unlock the Bank app on your phone, which will, unfortunately, give you some very bad news. It turns you that even with your salary, you don’t have enough money to cover said outstanding invoices, because it turns out your account actually has an overdraft, so you better find a way to earn some extra money so that you can make ends meet! To make things worse, your fridge is empty, and you have nothing to eat before going to the office.
It all sounds pretty mundane and ordinary, right? Well, you’re not wrong, but worry not because as soon as you make your way to the elevator, you will see that something is sparkling at the end of the corridor. The power has gone out, so why not go and check what this light source really is? It is then that you’ll realize that things are not what they seem and that something very wrong is going on around your character. With every passing day, more bizarre things will start to happen, making it harder to determine where reality ends…
There’s also a game within the game for you to play. Just pull up your in-game phone, go down to apps, and select BlipBlop! BlipBlop is a clicker style game in which you’ll literally be clicking a button over and over and over again – or tapping on the screen if you’re playing the game in Portable or Tabletop mode, or playing on a Nintendo Switch Lite. As you click away, you’ll start to collect blops, and by progressing through the game, you’ll unlock a store that will give you the chance to purchase bonuses with your blops. The more you click, the more experience you will get so that you can level up.
There is no other goal in BlipBlop but to distract you from life as you click and click and then click some more, so that you can get to level 100. Once you reach that milestone, you will get a chance to Prestige, which will lower your level down to one while giving you a mark to mark your achievement. And once you got Prestige, the fun doesn’t stop! You can just keep clicking – or tapping – in BlipBlop so that you can repeat the whole process, but once you get to level 100 again… nothing new will happen. But at least you’ll get to Prestige again if you want to!
One complaint I do have about Mosaic is that the text is too small to read from a comfortable distance, a problem that keeps popping up more and more in video games. It’s also an issue when playing in Portable or Tabletop mode as you try to look at stuff on your phone, or as you read the messages you get in-game from interacting with things. Want to check out the newspaper? Then you’re going to have to sit closer to the TV – or bring the Nintendo Switch console closer to you when not playing in docked mode – to be able to read all the text.
Mosaic is an interesting and bizarre game on Nintendo Switch that you’re going to love or hate. It’s a $19.99 point and click adventure that will take you a handful of hours to complete as you take on an experience that plays on themes of social isolation, anxiety, stress, giving us a glimpse into how lonely adulthood can end up being.
Disclaimer
This Mosaic review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Raw Fury.
